


Numbing Agent

by Kermits_Soft_Kitty



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civil War : AU Canon Divergence, Gen, Heart Attacks, Hurt Tony Stark, Injured!Tony, Mild Spoilers, Tony Stark Has A Heart, just not a strong one bless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 17:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6714334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kermits_Soft_Kitty/pseuds/Kermits_Soft_Kitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He may be arc-reactor free now, but that doesn't mean his heart is as it once was. Tony finds out the hard way that his heart will never be quite the same.<br/> </p><p>(There are spoilers for elements of Civil War, but it diverts before Bucky's Great Escape)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numbing Agent

**Author's Note:**

> So this is just me not wanting to acknowledge the end of Civil War. There ARE mild spoilers in this, so don't read if you want to be completely spoiler-free.
> 
> Takes part directly AFTER Tony's arm comment, so diverging into another meeting that didn't happen in the film.
> 
> I picked up on Tony's complaint about having a numb arm, and the way he was rubbing his chest, and my mind instantly went to his heart condition. I thought that it would calm the waters a bit! 
> 
> You can read Steve & Tony's relationship how ya feel ;) - and I'm in love with the idea of Natasha and Tony having this sibling bond in a way, which is sort of explored in the film, but not as much as I'd have loved. Plus, Natasha needs some loving. She was totally kickass. 
> 
> The title is a play on 1) numbing agents used in dentistry & hospital procedures, etc, 2) the idea that Tony is surrounded by ex-S.H.I.E.L.D agents
> 
> Translate it as you will, I put absolutely no thought into it!
> 
> Anyway! I hope you enjoy, this is UNBETA'D. Much love! xx

* * *

 

 

It had been roughly twenty five minutes since he’d admitted to Natasha that his arm had gone numb. She had frowned at his comment but Tony cut her off before she could say anything - he'd probably trapped a nerve or something. Judging by the way he'd been tensing his fists with his first confrontation with Rogers, Tony wouldn't put it past his body to do something like that. By no, Ross had brought back Steve from wherever the weirdo had wandered off too - along with the stifling tension that went alongside his presence - and attempted to re-assemble them all in a manner that made sure people couldn’t lunge over the table and throttle each other. T’Challa was a silent and authoritative figure at the head of the table, Tony and Natasha on one side, Steve and Sam the other. Bucky was still down in containment. Sharon lingered at the back of the room, quiet but attentive, her blonde hair an uncomfortably bright beacon in the corner of Tony's vision. 

 

After a while, Tony found himself zoning out, eyes drooping tiredly as a whine began to sing irritatingly in his ear. Ross’s voice, despite vocalising important things that Tony believed in, was washing over him like a warm wave in the Bahamas. Tony was bone tired and exhausted; he wanted to make Steve sign the goddamn Accords and let sleeping dogs lie. Then he wanted to fly home, get some ice-cream and watch re-runs of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ as he wolfed it all down. 

 Tony sighed. The heat was rising in the room, despite the AC being turned on full blast. Tony raised his right hand - the other lay limp in his lap - and tugged at his collar in an attempt to flush away the nauseating dampness that clung to the back of his neck, an action that didn’t go unnoticed by Sam and Steve, who glanced at him. He looked away. 

 

Soon, however, the numbness started to travel up his neck, bleeding out into a burning pain that seared up his jawline and down through the intercostal muscles of his ribcage. Tears sprung into his eyes at the sensation, a vice like feeling clamping tight around his lungs and heart, crushing and squeezing and _asphyxiating_. It felt like his chest was being compressed from the inside out, sharp spikes of agony making his stomach jump about, bile sloshing up his gullet and staining the back of his throat. Tony swallowed hard, trying to suck in steady and even breaths through his nose as he blinked furiously. His heartbeat pounded frantically in time with his headache and he barely had enough time to slur out a ‘I’m very sorry about this’, before he was bending down and vomiting onto the ground, throat tightening as he gasped for breath. He overbalanced, head swimming violently, and would have nearly toppled out of his chair had Natasha not caught him by the shoulders and heaved him back up.

 

—

 

Despite not being on the same page, neither Steve nor Sam missed the sudden pallor of Tony’s face. Sam exchanged a glance with his friend, raising one eyebrow in question. Steve shrugged gently, but Sam could see how Steve kept one eye trained on Stark for the duration of Ross’s insistence that signing the Sokovia Accords was the best course of action. 

 

Natasha spoke up after a while, asking whether amendments could be made, considering the restrictions placed upon them. She echoed what Steve had said to Tony - what if they were needed somewhere and the Accords prevented that?

 

Ross seemed somewhat mollified by this and retreated into his head for a while. This was around about the time when Tony broke the silence with a ‘I’m very sorry about this’. His voice was slurred, as though his tongue was too big for his mouth, and his eyes looked distressed. 

 

Then he turned and vomited onto the floor. 

 

“Holy shit,” Sam exclaimed. “He always do that in important meetings?” he asked, turning to Steve. Steve shook his head, getting out of his chair as Natasha heaved Tony back into his seat. Her fingers were on his pulse and she was checking him over almost frantically. 

 

“He’s got signs of a heart attack and he complained of a numb arm about an hour earlier. _Shit_ , I knew I shouldn't have let him brush it off." Natasha hissed. She looked up, catching the eyes of the blonde stood at the doorway. "Sharon, we may need a defibrillator soon if we don’t get him steady." Natasha warned."Anyone got any aspirin?” 

 

"There'll probably be some in the emergency medical kit," Sharon pointed out. "I'll go get some."

 

 

Natasha nodded briskly, catching Tony by the face, slim hands forcing him to look at her with his wide, terrified eyes. Steve could see Tony’s pulse jumping in his throat unevenly.

 

“Nat, his pulse is off the chart.” Steve said worriedly, eyes tracking the frantic heartbeat pounding under the sharp curve of Tony's jaw. It was erratic and jumpy, beat irregular. Steve watched uselessly and helplessly as it thudded all over the place before it just suddenly stopped completely. His eyes widened in horror as he watched Tony's eyes roll back in his head, hands falling slack, and Natasha jumped back into action.  

 

“ _Shit_ \- Steve, get the defibrillator. T’Challa, help me get him on the floor.” Natasha called out. The Wakandan King obliged without fuss, helping her lay the Iron Man to the ground as Ross barked out orders to clear the space for the ambulance crew. Natasha began chest compressions, her hair obscuring her vision of Tony’s face. Sam was hovering, nearby if Natasha needed anything else. 

 

Steve came rushing back in with an AED and Natasha didn’t even worry herself over how much Tony's attire cost as she tore Tony’s tie, waistcoat and shirt off. It could be replace - Tony couldn't. 

 

“Damn.” Sam murmured as Tony's chest was revealed. "That's one fancy piece of artwork." He was dragging chairs out of the way as he caught ear of wailing sirens in the streets below. Steve also stared at the mangled mess of Tony’s chest, throat dry as he realised the implications that removing the arc reactor had caused. Then T’Challa slapped the pads on, one on the right hand side of Tony’s chest, the other by his ribcage, and Steve jolted out of his stupor. He shoved the table out of the way as he saw the ambulance crew rush into the vicinity and turned back to watch Tony's lifeless body spasm violently under the electrical current. Steve felt a sense of ill, concern and chilling fright rush over him at the sight and turned away briefly. 

 

The Accords glared back at him. 

 

—

 

Tony’s incident had somehow brought the disbanded Avengers back together in a shaky, jumbled sort of manner. He now lay silently in hospital, seven miles away from the place where his heart attack had taken form, and Steve sat beside Natasha in the chairs of the waiting room, phone pinging with updates. Sharon was keeping an eye on Bucky for him; following Tony's stint in the meeting room, an aggrieved and broken young man had gone down to Bucky posing as his official 'interrogator', but had in fact been intending on triggering Bucky back into full Winter Soldier mode again. Apparently, Sharon told him, his aim had been to tear the Avengers apart from the inside by revealing Bucky as the true reason behind Howard and Maria Stark's death. 

Steve sighed at the thought, dropping his head down to his knees. That wasn't going to be a pretty conversation. 

 

Natasha patted him on the back gently before getting up and disappearing for a while. Steve assumed she’d gone to check on Tony, but a couple of minutes later, the sweet and sickly scent of bubblegum bleached the inside of his nostrils. He looked up to see Natasha smiling, handing him a stick of gum - the same gum he’d once hidden the flashdrive behind back when they’d toppled S.H.I.E.L.D. He smiled. 

 

The olive branch was accepted, and the motion of his jaw working the gum soon calmed his frazzled nerves enough for him to speak his mind. It was an awkward atmosphere to talk about it in, and probably not the best time, but it couldn't go left unsaid, and Natasha was probably going to be more inclined to give him reasonable answers than a man currently out cold recovering from a heart attack. 

 

“I get why you’re on his side, Nat. But I can’t accept the terms that it suggests.”

 

Natasha was quiet for a moment before speaking. The sound of her chewing her gum was mixed up in the plethora of hospital noises; the beeping of heart monitors, the rattle of gurneys, the distant wailing of ambulances entering A&E, the hiss of ventilators and the cries of despair and joy of families building-wide. When she finally spoke, it startled him.  

“I’m not entirely for it, Steve, but I think you need to see where Tony’s standpoint derives from." She shifted in her seat, folding her legs over. "I don’t know whether Wanda ever told you this, but Tony’s nightmare, when she brain-fucked us all back before Sokovia, was us. Dead. By his hand. He blurted it out once when we'd had too much bourbon to drink. ”

 

Steve blew out a breath. Natasha continued. 

 

“I’m not saying that it’s why I’m in favour for the Accords, because there are elements of it I don’t like one bit, but Tony has a lot of guilt. He had a lot of red in his ledger before the Avengers were formed - ”

 

“He didn’t know that, though. It was unintentional killing because he wasn’t the one selling the weapons.” Steve pointed out. Natasha fixed him with a stare. 

 

“- and in some ways,” she continued, smiling at Steve’s huff of laughter as he ducked his head down. “He managed to wipe it out with New York, by saving all those tens of thousands of people with us. But with that came his paranoia and ego - he thought that he could prevent further invasions happening by making sure the world was safe by his hand.”

 

“After all,” Steve murmured lowly. “Who better to save the world than Iron Man; the Avenger and Industrialist?”

 

Natasha smiled gently, rubbing Steve on the arm. “Ultron was the child borne out of Tony’s fear of what people with the potential to be bad could do, and the belief that he was one of them. Ultron could have been Vision, but unfortunately, hate breeds contempt, or in this instance, fear bred evil. Tony feared himself and his potential to be bad so much, a chance to be so bad that it could kill the Avengers, and Ultron latched onto that. He latched onto the wrong bit. And it happened, yes. But it's in the past."

 

“Tony’s never been _bad_ ,” Steve said quietly. “His morals are just all over the place.”

 

“You may not have ever set out to kill Nazi’s or Germans, but you, to all of those German civilians, were the bad guy because you came into their country without invitation. Tony never set out to kill Sokovians or Afghani civilians, but his weapons and his toys made him the bad guy to them; that kids mother from MIT blames Tony for her sons death. Tony isn't only trying to keep everyone safe; he's trying to keep himself in check. He’s sickeningly aware of what he’s capable of, because he’s seen himself do it.”

 

“I know, Nat. I know." Steve sighed. "But it just puts too many limitations on us if we do sign it. We can’t go straight to a problem without checking with anyone. We can’t help anyone if our support is vetoed. We’d be nothing more than guinea pigs, let out to run when our masters decide when. How many lives could be lost in the deliberation period?”

 

“And that’s what we’re fighting against." Natasha enthused, leaning to catch Steve's face with her hand. "That’s why Ross called us back - whilst you were mooning over Tony and his gung ho morals, Ross was, begrudgingly, considering to let the Accords change somewhat. Until Tony ruined the atmosphere and vomited all over a perfectly nice carpet.” 

Steve smiled, rubbing his face with his hands aggressively as he let out a growling sigh. Tension strung his shoulders up to his ears like puppet strings and Steve wanted nothing more than to call it quits with his close friend and just let sleeping dogs lie. His phone pinged again and he looked at it. Sharon said Bucky had calmed down and was bordering the line where he knew who he was again. Steve sent a message back saying he’d be another hour and he’d come down. 

 

“You think Tony will let us change the Accords?” Steve asked. “He seemed all for the rigid rules about a day ago.”

 

“I think you underestimate his heart.” Natasha admitted. “He has a lot of room in it for certain people. You take up quite a chunk.”

 

“Even with the Howard sitch?” Steve asked with raised eyebrows, a teasing grin on his mouth.

 

“Even then.” Natasha said gently. She stretched out in her seat, graceful against the background of the hospital bulletin that warned of Ebola, HIV tests and how to cope with postpartum depression for new mothers in various different languages. “I’m going to have a look at Tony and then go talk to T’Challa and the EU dignitaries for funsies. It’s exciting watching them squirm.”

 

“Okay. I’ll see you around.” Steve said. Natasha patted him on the head and turned left out of the waiting room. Steve stayed there for a little longer, mulling over the situation as he stared absently at a potted fern. He couldn’t give in to his own morals and let Bucky be taken into custody - that wasn’t who he was. That wasn’t who he had been his whole life. Bucky  _was_ his whole life, if you wanted to be realistic. They'd known each other since they were tiny and Steve wasn't about to give up on him now. 

 

If the Accords suited his desires, he’d see if he signed them.  

 

Besides, Steve thought to himself as he spat out the now tasteless bubblegum into the bin full of snotty tissues, fancy Accords called for fancy pens. And Steve doubted Tony would have them lying close by now.

 

—

 

It took a little while until Tony was up to leaving the hospital. Steve felt sort of guilty about making Tony so stressed about the Accords, but Tony admitted to him that he wasn’t the only one overloaded with the whole shitstorm. He’d be prescribed with medication following his  hospital release, but it was only the everyday aspirin, to ensure his blood thinned. 

 

“I don’t even drink anymore.” Tony said, collapsed back in a chair back in the Avengers HQ in a way that was the polar opposite to the rigid, uppity posture of the man who had been fighting for the Accords naught but two weeks ago - he was wearing fox socks for pities sake. “It was fun to look at their faces when I said I didn’t. My reputation precedes me.”

 

Steve smiled, watching as Vision and Wanda, now no longer at odds, cooked in the kitchen. Sam snuck lumps of mashed potato out of the pot warming on the stovetop every so often, feigning interest in his phone when they turned back. Tony let out a soft sigh, wiggling his toes in his colourful socks. 

 

“So. What did you think of them this time around?” he asked Steve, fixing him with a weary expression. His head rested tiredly on the back of the sofa  and Steve could tell that Tony was only asking out of politeness - there was a time and place for true arguments over the Accords, but now wasn't it. Tony was merely asking so he could pass the message along and let it be quiet for the day. Steve leant back in his chair, the Accords sat on the glass table in front of them. 

 

“They’re better. I may be able to work with them.” he acknowledged. Tony rolled his eyes. 

 

“You’re so much more dramatic than dad ever told me. God. If I’d had known you were this stringent I’d have avoided your patriotic ass on the helicarrier altogether.”

 

“Yeah, but then you’d never have figured out I like Twinkies.”

 

“I think everyone likes Twinkies, Cap.” Tony said with a grin. Steve smiled and ducked his head. Natasha came strolling past, enticed in with the scent of the cooking food. She paused behind Tony’s chair, resting her arms on it. 

 

“You two looking into each others eyes again?” she teased. Tony, without looking, flipped her the backwards bird. Natasha pulled a very unattractive face and Steve couldn’t hold in his laughter. She moved away, dropping a gentle, affectionate kiss to Tony’s temple. It had become commonplace for her to do this, their time together making their friendship more of a siblingship.

  

“So you’ll sign them?” he asked. Steve shrugged. 

 

“Give it a couple of days until I know what’s going to happen with Bucky and maybe then I’ll sign them.”

 

Tony didn’t reply, but he didn’t look aggrieved, nodding in acceptance. Steve turned to the otherwise muted television and switched the sound back on again, only to elicit a chorus of complaints from the kitchen. A lump of mashed potato came sailing past Steve's ear to splat on the wall above the television and Tony burst out laughing. At least there was one thing Tony and Steve could agree on, Steve thought, catching Tony’s eye and grinning.

 

RuPaul’s Drag Race was the _best._

 


End file.
